There is a need to decrease infections in U.S. hospitals as they are increasing in frequency and creating costs to hospitals, the government and consumes. One recent report in Clinical Infectious Diseases and reported in Science Daily stated that a review of inpatient data from U.S. hospitals shows that the number of infections caused by a common bacterium increased by over 7 percent each year from 1998 to 2003. The corresponding economic burden to hospitals increased by nearly 12 percent annually. One bacterium, Staphylococcus aureus (also known as staph) is a significant cause of a wide range of infectious diseases in humans, ranging from minor skin infections to life-threatening diseases such as pneumonia and meningitis. According to the report, in 1998, U.S. hospitals reported a little more than a quarter-million staph infections and slightly over 7 percent of those patients died. By the final year of the study, 2003, hospitals reported nearly 390,000 infections, representing 1 percent of that year's inpatient stays.
The report suggests that one possible reason for the increase in infections is the documented increase of an antibiotic-resistant staph infection known as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Interestingly, the report notes that staph-related in-hospital mortality rate dropped by almost 5 percent each year, which may be the result of the introduction of more stringent infection control programs or due to appropriate early treatment of MRSA infections with an effective antibiotic. Nonetheless, hospital expenditures associated with staph infections are substantial, increasing from $8.7 billion in 1998 to $14.5 billion in 2003. This cost includes such factors as extended length of hospitalization and additional surgery, medications, lab tests, and radiologic studies.